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If It's Not the Money, Then What? By George Ziemann (March 13, 2003) The Internet is free, no matter what anyone tells you. Oh, yeah, you might have to pay to access, but once you hit the on-ramp, it's time to go cruising. Sure would like some tunes for the road. But we don't allow no music on this here super-highway. Don't believe in that stuff. It's bad. Don't you know you're stealing from artists? Don't you know it hurts the record labels? How are the poor artists going to survive? Why would they ever bother to record a song if everyone is just going to listen to it for free? And check the financial pages. Here's my favorite. It's a year old but it doesn't matter. They don't know any more today than they did last year. They certainly don't know any more than the record companies themselves. I believe there was a time, perhaps briefly in the mid-1960s, when the music industry was clicking on all cylinders. Despite all the moaning about the threat of corporate rock, the industry itself was making more and more money every year. Up until 2000. Hail to the Heroes Before I go on, I would like to thank those musicians, both on my radio and in my life, that kept me believing it was all for something. Maybe this is it. I say this because, if I am right, everyone wins (well, almost everyone). Some of you are going to have a hard time with this because you may not get it at first. It is going to seem too simple. The true rock stars will realize the wisdom in this and make the transition without missing a sale. The fabricated acts will instantly die out. So no matter how it may look at first, this is really for the musicians and the music. To the Labels... You need to walk away from the RIAA. Today. We'll find someone else to hand out gold records. You want to make money or do you want to play games? The RIAA is playing games. As you can see from Kazaa, we can play games too. Forever. Was the whole "fear of Napster" your idea or the RIAA's? Think about that very carefully before you answer. Did each label individually come to the conclusion that this was a threat to your industry? Or did someone come in and tell you about it? And who was that? Or did you get together and collectively develop this position? Who do you guys have for financial consultants? Please tell me because if I ever make any money, I don't want any advice from them. Between your internal geniuses, the international media, the entire Wall Street brain trust and all the Congressional committees you have been paraded back and forth in front of, not one of them has the vision to see, yet another elephant hiding in the same room (and this is a bi-partisan elephant, by the way, it's a species, not a party affiliation). The only conclusion I can draw is that between all of you, you wouldn't have the financial wisdom to balance your checking account if the bank didn't give you that tiny little book to write your checks down in. How did you guys get in charge of the music business anyway? To Congress in General... Have any of you ever run a business of any size? You sure don't act like it. You've sat there month after month for years, listening to the RIAA's line of bull and none of you ever asked the obvious question. Orrin Hatch, I am ashamed of you. If anyone should have been able to figure this out, it should have been you. To the Commerce Committee... You are absolutely right. This belongs in the Justice Department. And while you're digging out stuff to send over, pull out all of those Napster transcripts. In about five minutes, you're going to be real interested in them again. To the American Public... You don't have to watch this. It will not be pretty. Small children should leave the room. The Solution I am flabbergasted at the number of people who have written to me, pointing out their credentials as being knowledgeable about the recording industry. As each one has run through the same cycle of repetitious nonsense, it has become increasingly obvious that they must have all read this in a book somewhere.
As it turns out, the artist royalty is about the same as the songwriter/publisher royalty, about 8 cents per song. But that's not the important part.
Let's fix that. Apparently, you've been manufacturing and shipping out about $4 billion in free goods every year. Totally unsubstantiated rumor has it that a lot of it goes overseas to get licensed to re-import to cheat the artist even more. I don't know about that. Like I said, just a rumor. Regardless, stop sending out so much stuff. Send one copy of each CD to Clear Channel Corporate headquarters, and one copy to each of the other conglomerates. Send them out to the other radio stations, too, but only if they ask. And don't send any more checks with them. Fire the independent promotors you've got now because they're a bunch of greedy bastards. How many do you want? We'll work for free. You want marketing and promotion? Try the Internet. Word is that it's free once you hook up. Exploit the hell out of it. I spend $25 a month for this site and I don't even advertise. Put a couple of songs out there and we'll spread them around the world in a few hours. You'll actually start selling music again. And with all that excess cash, maybe you could kick the artist pay up to something reasonable, like 50%. Even if your sales remain flat, you'll make an extra $5 or $6 billion annually, which should get EMI's stock price up above $2 again. Are you people all idiots? Can't you see that? Take your biggest expense and chop the hell out of it. Throw bigger parties -- more booze, more broads, more bran muffins. Go back to the gregarious lifestyle we expect from our rock stars. Can you possible throw away any more money than you have in the last two years trying to fight totally free promotion avenues, while giving away 25 to 30% of your manufactured product then, on top of that, paying the radio stations to play your songs? Is there not one businessman in America with enough intelligence to see this? You know it would work. But there's a problem with that, isn't there? Be a Rock Star in Your Spare Time It does not take a half million dollars to record a CD. I have better gear in my living room than George Martin and the Beatles had when they recorded Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. It did not cost a fortune. Here's a Cara LaFemme song that I recorded in my living room on a Saturday and had on the Net three days later. You may or may not like the song, but if I didn't tell you, you wouldn't know I didn't use a big, expensive studio. 250 people downloaded it in about 2 weeks and Cara was tickled to death. She didn't cry about people stealing from her. You didn't used to be able to do anything like this. For years, musicians have bowed to the record labels and dreamed of the day when they, too, would be noticed by the A&R guy who accidently walked in when they were doing the best performance of their life, get that big advance and actually have a record with their music on it. You couldn't do it without them. Eveybody knew that. But now you can. And that's the whole problem. Because everybody knows that, too. The Ugly Truth You know that if promotion, marketing and distribution have been "by far the most significant costs of all," the labels have been waiting for decades for the answer to that to manifest itself. When it shows up, do they celebrate the tremendous potential increase in profits? Everyone else does, even when they can't deliver. Enron comes to mind and I lost quite a few bucks on Exodus Communications' bogus future myself. Why don't they exploit this gift called the Internet to its fullest advantage? Free marketing? Free promotion? There are two possible explanations. The first is that all of these opportunistic, greedy, exploitive record labels and the American, British, German and French corporations that own them were collectively all too stupid to recognize their own salvation when it dropped in their lap. All of them. An international coalition of brainless idiots. It's their only defense. The second possible explanation is even worse. |